This morning’s Radio Four news headlines tell us that David Mills, husband of Labour Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, will learn soon whether he will face trial on corruption charges.
“Miss Jowell, who is separated from Mr Mills ….”
Well, yes. Since Saturday. Obviously no time for that little detail.
The Today programme page adequately describes the first item after the news at seven.
“Hear the latest news from Washington where the Bush administration has been embarrassed by the comments of its ambassador in Iraq.”
The story, an LA Times interview with the ambassador, is an assessment of the current situation in Iraq, and as such is an important story which the BBC are right to cover. But to the BBC its importance is entirely couched in terms of its potential to embarrass President Bush. I’m not at all sure this is responsible reporting – in fact it’s quite distasteful. Listening to the BBC, you get the impression that dead Iraqis only count when viewed in terms of their impact on Presidential poll ratings.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3601493.stm
“Where have all the men gone?”
Well, it’s simple. These one million men have been arrested and held in a huge underground “Minority Report” type prison near Peterborough because they had, or were going to have, heretical thoughts about Multiculturism and “Diversity”.
HYS – “how has wi-fi affected internet use”
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&edition=1&ttl=20060308231952&messageID=510299񼥛
the third highest recommended is:
“Wi-fi, has transformed my life – I now watch less than 1 hour of tv a month as I just don’t need it (apart from David Attenborough!).”
oh dear. Tessa Jowell must be working furiously on that computer tax replacement for the license fee.
😉
“Once upon a time known as the dum-dum bullet.”
which are banned under “international law” i.e. the UN i think.
however, it seems that U.S. cops have their heads screwed on with regards to dealing with criminals and not endangering innocent bystanders.
Actually they are soft as opposed to hard so they stop after hitting the bad guy and unlike hard rounds they won’t then carry on through other people, buildings and cars nearby.
I have fired a softnosed 9mm which stopped inside a human target and no further. But a hardnose 7.62mm fired from the old SLR could go through half a dozen bad guys and the sandbag walls/steel plates in their trenches! This is why many of us hated the SA80 with its pathetic 5.56mm NATO round coz it wouldn’t stop a mad Russian or the equivalent today!
dave t,
Just think how many more rounds you can carry!
At least the people have had a good look at how useless goverment is at doing anything. The best thing the people can do with public money is double MPs wages. On the condition that they all promiss to stay at home 24 hours a day. The last 9 years should have shown even the most strident socialist that the state just cant cut it. It just cant delivery what people nead and want,even with all the best will in the world. This matters because poverty does not just starve you, it deprives you of your freedom. Which is more valuable than even life itself. There is only one thing that makes anything work and that is the human spirit. Politicians are very good at their job. Its just that their job is gaining money and power, and keeping it, for as long as possible.
Archduke
If you cant remember the last labour goverment well, you are in good company. I calculate that you would have to be at least 50 to have been paying much attention. That means that a large number of MPs dont remember either. Some of those poor misguided Labour MPS, REALLY thought they were going to make the world a better place. HOW SAD…….for US.
A hospital in Cornwall fired 300 to cut costs………….why not do the same in Parliament ?
“why not do the same in Parliament ?”
wrong target.
its the unelected and unaccountable consultants and quangos that you should fire.
in fact , i’d rather there more MORE MPs – elected via proportional representation.
PR is one sure way to ensure that politicians dont turn into ego maniacal totalitarians – PR forces them to negotiate with each other. PR ensures that no one party will ever have a majority in parliament.
the anti-PR politicians justify the first past the post because it ensures “stability” – yes, stability on their terms. stability for their jobs and their gravy train. First-past-the-post makes them LESS accountable to the people.
this is why you are seeing a pattern – when Thatcher had been in power too long, the autocratic tendencies started coming to the fore. Lo and behold, with Blair, exactly the same thing is happening.
folks might disagree with me, pointing to the chaos of the PR Italian system.
But, in my home Irish constituency, i have five MPs – whom I can have competing against each other to get something done for me. And a lot of other people do the same.
Archduke,
I like the idea of One (net) Pound of Tax paid, One Vote.
Might be better than PR.
archduke
Nope, PR would be a disaster and is anti-democratic.
First-past-the-post makes them LESS accountable to the people.
On the contrary, PR equates to weighing the national vote, followed by each party naming the individuals who’ll sit in the Commons, i.e. if a party’s vote equates to 200 seats, the party names the top 200 people on the list.
What we have now (FPTP) means that you vote for a named individual, not a party. That winning individual is your representative in Parliament and if you’re unhappy with that individual you can vote them out next time. It’s a key feature of FPTP which many forget – you do not vote for a party, you vote for an individual. That the individual sent to Parliament is the MP for is vastly more important than the faction to which they belong.
If you want to improve representation and accountability then campaign for the end of formal political parties.
“If you want to improve representation and accountability then campaign for the end of formal political parties.”
but thats exactly , more or less, whats happened in Ireland.
People rarely vote for the “party” – they vote for a person i.e. “that guy did nothing for us locally – we’ll vote him out. but that other chap got the school built – great , we’ll vote for him”)
it’s hard to describe if you havent experienced it.
“Nope, PR would be a disaster and is anti-democratic”
well, the form of PR you describe certainly is!
the transferable vote system (which is used in ireland) is incredibly democratic.
“I like the idea of One (net) Pound of Tax paid, One Vote.
Might be better than PR.”
that’s called feudalism.
i would have thought that we’ve progressed on a bit from that.
The form of PR used in the UK for the EU “parliament” is the list system as described by Pete_London. Accordingly, as he implies, voters cannot get rid of the people near the top of the list. So the time servers and senior party hacks always get reelected. Under the first past the post system (and, possibly, I don’t know, the Irish system) you can boot out your MP no matter how senior. Mrs Thatcher, for instance, always represented a more or less marginal constituency which now has a Labour MP. It was not beyond the bounds of probability to have had the prime minister lose her seat. More to the point, the legitimacy of the British constitution rests on continued practice and acceptance over 800+ years. The basis of the House of Commons is the original summons (in 13th or 14th century) for 2 representatives from each (equivalent of) constituency. The FPTP system is directly derived from that.
As it is – and this is not immediately anything to do with the purpose of the B-BBC blog – there is an argument (to which I am sympathetic) for saying that although the present government creates new laws in accordance with the strict legal process, that law or the way it is administered is not legitimate since it does not accord with the conventions and practice of the British constitution which our ancestors created. I could go on but this is not really a B-BBC subject.
Umbongo
Granted it’s not a B-BBC matter. Do you have any links to what you allude to in your final sentence?
Pete_London,
I heard a very good idea at the last election.
They should introduce a “non of the above” section to the ballot paper. If “none of the above” received more of the vote than anybody else, there would be another vote and all original candidates/parties would be banned from standing. This would lead to a greater number of independent MP’s sitting in the Commons (and possibly more interest from the general population)
Pete_London
“Granted it’s not a B-BBC matter. Do you have any links to what you allude to in your final sentence?”
Not immediately – these are just my own thoughts: although I’m sure there are constitutional lawyers and the odd journalist out there who are thinking along the same lines. The difficulty – and the beauty – of our constitution is that, although it IS largely written, the writing is not all in one place: also much of the unwritten part is in the actual practice of working the constitution (eg there is nothing in law to prevent retrospective legislation but the constitutional convention/practice is (was?) that such legislation should be used v. sparingly and only then as relieving legislation – certainly not to impose new liabilities – please tell Mr Brown)
Most PR systems end up being very “redistributive” and very socialist.
Majoritarian rule is far better to protect the minority from the majority.
Most Euro socialist systems are PR, Britain and the US are majoritarian.
yeah – but the U.S. has a written constitution – and separation of the judicary, senate/congress and the president, with a strong local government right down to the levels of suburbs and small towns. not to mention the right to bear arms – which is there just in case the government gets too totalitarian.
britain doesnt have any of that – not even close.
“Majoritarian rule is far better to protect the minority from the majority.”
fox hunters would beg to differ.
read up on James Madison, “tyranny of the majority”.
“The form of PR used in the UK for the EU “parliament” is the list system as described by Pete_London.”
that is an utterly appalling system…
“The form of PR used in the UK for the EU “parliament” is the list system as described by Pete_London.”
ireland uses PR – and has never had a majority socialist government.
ever.
it works both ways you know.
Archduke
Wasn’t Dick Spring – sometime Deputy PM of the Republic – part of a Labour/Fine Gael coalition in the late 70s?
Archduke
Just re-read your contribution – you did say “majority” socialist government – sorry about that.
“Wasn’t Dick Spring – sometime Deputy PM of the Republic – part of a Labour/Fine Gael coalition in the late 70s?”
that was in the 80s in three governments and in the 90s too.
but he’s as “socialist” as say , Chris Patton or anyone else on the left of the Tory party.
but thats just Ireland – the politics is skewed to the right of England.
100,000 voters in a constituency- so you have 5 MPs say. so 100,000 divided by 5 is 20,000
20,000 is known as the “quota” – you need that many votes to win a seat.
voters vote their preferences 1 to 5 out of the candidate list.
so , say the MP with most votes is a Labour guy, and he gets 19,000 first preferences. to get his seat he needs 1,000 2nd preferences.
the count is redone – this time counting the 2nd preferences – anytime the Labour guy gets a 2nd preference this is added to his 19,000 – so basically gets into office by votes from people who supported the Tories, Lib Dems, UKIP, Communists, Greens, BNP and what not.
of course he’ll get more 2nd perference communist votes, but he might also get a few 2nd preference Tory votes going his way.
this continues on and on until all 5 MPs are elected.
the MP with the fewest first preferences, depends on lots of 2, 3rd, 4th, 5th preferences from all over the place.
in other words, you generally dont end up with MPs who dont give a damn about that middle class Tory area and just stick to their “patch” – which is what first past the post gives you.
the other aspect is that with 5 MPs, you , the voter, can play them against each other, so that your school gets repaired or your road gets improved.
the MPs also compete with each other in order to get things done locally.
a recent survey in Ireland, showed that the majority of people genuinely believed that MPs were “hard working”. of course they are – they’re in the local paper every bloody week, doing the competing with other stuff.
its quite different going over to England, where most people dont have a clue what their MP is up to – or even who their MP is. that is what i would call a “democratic deficit”
archduke
It sounds like ‘democratic deficit’ = ‘pork barrel politics’. We don’t need busier MPs fighting to do more and more. Busy MPs have saddled us with a £500,000,000,000 tax bill for this year. We need to cull politicians, send the remainder on holiday for a few months and then call in an air strike when they come back.
Pete .. indeed. stuff works in some countries , doesnt in others.
but i’ve nothing against “pork barrel politics” – thats just another term for
“the member of parliament is working for his constituents”
i’m very fond of the swiss system though.
gather enough signatures and you can overturn a law – stuff like that.
gather enough signatures and you can overturn a law – stuff like that.
We have the same things in California — sometimes it’s a two-edge sword. It works really well when the voters have had enough of some political nonsense like bi-lingual education and the politicians refuse to listen. It doesn’t work so good when the voters realize they can start voting for all kinds of expensive public works projects without having any kind of idea of what state revenues are or what the state budget is.
The way it works is that you only have to get 750,000 signatures of registered voters on a petition for a proposed law, and the petition is put up for a popular vote. (of course the law proposed must be congruent with state and federal constitutions — we can’t vote to legalize slavery or something like that.)
Susan
It is a double edged sword – if the voters choose to do something you don’t agree with! But that’s the problem with democracy.
The real issue about changing electoral systems is the people with the power to change the system are the party in power. And the party in power are unlikley to change the system that got them elected! And that applies to all political parties – it aint a right-left thing.
There are many folk on the far left (and by far left I don’t mean what you would call the far left like the UK Labour Party) such as various Trotskyite socialist parties woudl want to see a change in the elctoral system as they would more likely get policians elected, albeit a small number – the problem for the far left ois that this woudl mean the same would apply to the non mainstream right wing parties too.
I for one would welcome a degree of proportional representation in UK parliamentary elections as people who live in strong Labour or Tory areas would have a vote that might mean something. If you are a Labour Party supporter living in a affluent middle class area you have as little voice as a Tory in a Labour stronghold – and that aint right.
It is a double edged sword – if the voters choose to do something you don’t agree with! But that’s the problem with democracy.
No what I meant specifically was the fiscal irresponsbility of allowing the public to vote directly on whether to finance this or that public project out of the public purse. People run along and say, “Oh that sounds nice, let’s vote to put a bridge here and finance it with a 30-year 40 million dollar bond,” — but they forget that two years ago they voted yes on seven or eight similar bond issues and 10 or 11 two years before that, all costing thirty or forty or 100 million dollars apiece. All without having any clue of what state revenues are or what other budgetary obligations there are. Next thing you know, you have a budget deficit of 40 billion dollars. Which is what happened to us.
On the whole I think spending issues are best settled by representational legislatures, not by direct democracy. There are some important exceptions to that though. Such as when my state’s voters voted for a direct referendum to apportion 3 billion dollars to stem-cell research after the federal government voted not to fund stem-cell research.
For my state, the problem may be mitigated somewhat by raising the threshold of required signatures to 2 million registered voters or something like that to qualify a direct ballot measure. Then only the really important bond issues would get on the ballot and we’d stop nickle and diming ourselves with all these irresponsible public projects.
On the whole, I like our two-party, first-past-the-post system, tempered by the direct referenda system, and wouldn’t want any system where weirdo fringe parties could achieve power. That would make us as weak as some of these small European countries that are held in thrall to some nutty fringe party because they hold the balance of power in a coalition.
Susan you wrote:
“On the whole I think spending issues are best settled by representational legislatures, not by direct democracy. There are some important exceptions to that though. Such as when my state’s voters voted for a direct referendum to apportion 3 billion dollars to stem-cell research after the federal government voted not to fund stem-cell research.”
Even tho I’m on the pother side of the political divide I would tend to agree with you on the fiancial decsions being made by the legislature.
And I’m not being deliberartely provocative here, but if you there are going to be exceptions then maybe one would be asking the voters if they wanted to go to war in Iraq – a descion that costs the UK millions and millions and does result in the death of British soldiers and Iraqi citizens. I’m not saying that if we’d had a referrendum in the UK on the issue we wouldn’t have gone to war – but I do think we would have had an interesting and close referendum. After all we did have an un precendented march of over 1 million people to protest against the war. Whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of the war you can’t deny that that there was large public opposition to it.
And I’m not being deliberartely provocative here, but if you there are going to be exceptions then maybe one would be asking the voters if they wanted to go to war in Iraq – a descion that costs the UK millions and millions and does result in the death of British soldiers and Iraqi citizens.
Well, that’s up to the British people to decide. In the US we don’t have national direct referenda, only state ones. The only national referendum we have is the complicated and onerous process to amend our federal Constitution, which can literally take years, and even that needs to be done through the state legislatures.
On the whole, not specifically related to Iraq, I would say it’s probably not a good idea to have direct referenda on issues of national defense, due to the necessity of maintaining secrecy about many of the issues involved.
War is one of those issues decided in Privy Council and laid as an Order in the House of Commons.
Parliament cannot even reject a Budget – in most polities the Upper House can reject the Budget but not in Britain under the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts; yet the hereditaries are out of the Lords so let’s repeal the Parliament Acts.
A Budget vote is a Vote of Confidence so the Government whips its members, but the Lords should now be able to reject Money Bills so we can get some control on spending and have proper Committees to analyse legislation.
Parliament does not even do the job it did in the 17th Century – ie scrutinise spending and hold the Executive to account – why should it be given extra powers it would merely delegate to Brussels ?
Rick,
I keep going on about it, but “one pound of tax, one vote” would be a perfect system for a second chamber.
Scrutiny by the representatives of people who pay for it (the taxpayers).
the downside of that , is that entrepeneurs who employ thousands of people , such as philip green, would have absolutely no say in the second chamber, as they pay bugger all tax (he lives in Monaco).
archduke,
Why should someone who lives in Monaco have a say in the U.K.?
His STAFF in the U.K. should be trusted not to harm their own interests.